


Burned down two houses before we found a home

by ThisMessIsAPlace (McFearo)



Series: Son Of A Gun [4]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The saddest road trip, Ulysses Gets That Blowjob We All Know He Needs, now with added smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-13 14:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11761515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: “I didn' mean t’do it. Funny how I killt two places an’ I didn't mean t’do it,” he whispers. “Most men go they whole lives not killin' one whole place by accident.”“Killed two places with intent, in my time.”“Ain’t we a pair. Be a kindness on everyone if  we jus’... sank into the river.”**Ulysses needs to see the mess they made of Dry Wells. Ezra hoped he'd never see it again.





	1. Whoa Is Me

Some nights out in the desert -- lonesome but for ED-E, staring into campfire embers, or stars, or the far lights of the Strip -- Ezra catches himself fantasizing about what it would be like to have his whole family in one spot.  
  
Most of his siblings are back west, but there on a sharecropper farm south of Freeside lives his Ma and his youngest sister Maddie, and Juniper and Zaya and John, and their new little one, too. It's a home and a family he can return to, even if only June and Maddie try to make it feel that way.  
  
(Not to be unfair to Zaya. They'll love each other always as friends, but from a polite distance. It wouldn't be a kindness to her or John, the things that would be said if she went on spending too much time with the man she loved before him.)  
  
The rest are spread out: Veronica and Raul and Lily and Arcade and Cass and Boone.  
  
And Ulysses.  
  
(Rex is with The King, and there he'll stay.)

Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to have them all in one spot together. They've all been by the family home once or twice, with the exception of the one. Met his baby girl and sometimes each other.

He can picture it all with perfect clarity: Cass working trade with the caravans and sitting on the porch with his Ma, shooting the shit and seeing who has the sharpest tongue. A kind of bitter sarcasm runs through them both that alienates most but recognizes its kind. Whole conversations that seem hostile from the outside but just mean friendship.

He imagines Lily tending the brahmin and the children both, gentle as a bighorner kid. Raul working repairs with John, telling him stories and making quips that sweet-natured John would take with grace and good humor. Zaya and Veronica guarding the perimeter and chatting easily, warm and cheerful as they both are, with Boone enjoying the company in easy silence. Arcade teaching Maddie more nursing than what she could pick up without books, setting up where he's needed and has a family and good works to do both in ample supply. (Would that suit him? Any of them?)

 

Then... Ulysses.

  
  
Ezra can picture the man working the fields and keeping the animals, quiet and steadfast. Sitting up the nights under a canopy of stars with a hound, a lantern, a book. Laying all the old ghosts to rest and himself too, while living; maybe not starting anew, but something better for his weary soul than to be a dead man, still walking just to carry the old guilt a little farther.  
  
Not on NCR lands, though. And fitting him in with the rest of them is... It falls apart. He thinks Ulysses could get on with anyone if he cared to try. He just doesn’t think the man has trying in him anymore. He is as he is, bitter and opinionated and bending to nobody and nothing ever again, not for big reasons or little ones.  
  
He could have a family, needs one, but he wouldn't fit. Ezra supposes it will have to be. He doesn't tend to, either.  
  
Maybe it's best they're all spread as they are, making Ezra walk off his itch for it by walking all the roads between them. Maybe that's the only way they can all keep him: by being a constellation of destinations pulling him in, rather than one stifling home he keeps walking away from.

* * *

  
  
From the old wreckage of the canyon -- the one with Ezra's name on it like a last request -- it's three days' walk to the open wound of the Divide. He's bone-weary and worn out a dozen ways over when he gets there, and he climbs out of the debris to a hateful glare of a setting sun. It'd be beautiful over any other vista on earth but this one.  
  
Ulysses tilts an ear toward the sound of clicking spurs, but he doesn’t look up from whatever heavy thoughts he's inspecting against that old horizon. Still puts one thick arm out on reflex when Ezra's dragging feet stumble over stone, like he'd break his fall or catch him back from the ledge, even sitting. Might that he could. Ezra rights himself only enough to drop like stone the way he means to, onto his back at Ulysses' side.  
  
Ulysses looks down at him then, and Ezra can think of plenty enough to say:

  
  
_Almost fell for you again._ (That's his favorite.)

  
  
_Missed you._

  
  
_Love you._ (Ought to someday, better sooner; he can't bank on getting a later.)

  
_Hello_.

  
_I ever tell you 'bout the time I--_ (And he has a thousand times, wants to share them all and make more.)

 

He can think of plenty enough to say, and plenty more he _wants_ to say, but he finds that unwinding his jaw enough to speak takes more than he has in him to give just now. So he closes his eyes to the darkening sky and he says nothing at all.  
  
It's quiet for a good long while except for the wind. A creak of leather that's probably for his benefit alone gives him warning in advance of the hand that settles flat on his chest. Feeling his heartbeat, maybe, or the knife's evidence that it was there under his shirt. He drifts like that, and he doesn't realize how far he wandered from waking until Ulysses' chest-deep rattle of a voice brings him back around.  
  
"Been thinking."  
  
Ezra hums wordlessly in acknowledgment. _You don't say_ would be too much effort.  
  
"Left a wound on the earth. Us two. Not so deep as this." He can see with his eyes shut, the exact way Ulysses points at the destruction with his chin.  
  
"Deep enough," Ulysses admits, rumbling lower. "Even cutting through what's left behind of old scars."  
  
He's quiet for a while after that. Ezra is only half-conscious, swimming in the shallow end of sleep with a hand warming his bones through his shirt; he takes a minute to notice that the pause has stretched on longer than it ought to, when it's come dead center in an unfinished thought. Maybe thinks he's talking to himself by now, and he's nearly right.  
  
By then the words Ulysses has already said have started to sink under the surface and dissolve in the murk. Ezra has to fish them out in a hurried jumble, piece them back together in reverse.  
  
A waking breath rushes in through his teeth when he manages to wrench them apart. "Dry Wells," he prompts thickly.  
  
For a moment he almost thinks Ulysses has decided not to go on. Then:

  
  
"Need to go and see it with my own eyes."

  
  
Ezra is suddenly quite awake.

 

"The _hell_ you do." He props himself up on his elbows and gives Ulysses an incredulous look. Ulysses' hand falls away and lands in his own lap. He stares flatly back, unimpressed.  
  
"I do. Bear doesn't face what it breaks," he says slowly, sure as he's said it before, "Bull does and won't flinch. Takes pride in the work."  
  
"So, what, you gotta be contrarywise to both of 'em to feel bigger? Or jus' prove to yerself you ain't the second one no more?" Ezra bares his teeth and goes for the throat, doesn't know why:  
  
"Didn' flinch enough at New Canaan to learn from it, I reckon -- else wouldn't be nothin' in Dry Wells worth seeing 'cept tents an' banners."

Ulysses has a masterpiece of a glare, mean and sharp as glass splinters. For an odd moment Ezra expects to be hit. He wouldn't blame him. There wouldn't be justice in hitting him, because if a cut ever deserved salting now and then as a reminder, that's the one.  
  
It wouldn't be justified to strike Ezra, no. But he doesn't think he'd take it personal. Lots of people lash out when they're hurt, and hadn't that been how they met?  
  
Ulysses doesn't, and he wouldn't. He just looks away.  
  
Ezra struggles up to a proper sit and considers apologizing. Reflex, when you've hit someone you care about below the belt like that.  
  
Only, a whole damn city that didn't ask for war burned to the foundations, and it wasn't until they took a symbol of _his_ home that Ulysses felt sick with himself for teaching them how to make fire a weapon. Ezra can't apologize to him for that. No more than Ulysses could apologize for reminding Ezra of the ashes stuck to his own heels.

But there's nothing to gain from looking into it. Nothing made better by Ulysses suffering more. Rather hurt him to show him there's no point in it than let the idea carry out it's course.

 

Ezra saw it once. He can't... He remembers enough. He won't go back.

 

"Why onna Devil's red earth would you wanna go there?" he asks quietly, even though he knows the reason. It was his reason, too.

"Issa hellhole. Nothin' but fallout, an' burnt rubble." He feels himself trailing off. The Divide looks like a pop-up children's book beneath them.

" _Unnerstandably pissed off_ Legion boys--"  
  
If he were to turn his head he could see the edges of the page hidden in his blind spot. Turn it and hope for something better. Take a lighter to it and burn it all again.  
  
Suppose next page is Dry Wells, come to think of it. Flat and empty as ink on paper.  
  
"Nuclear shadows," he finishes, but it's far off. The words aren't words.  
  
Ulysses watches him a while, and Ezra tries to shake the mist out of his skull.  
  
His cousin died of sickness, years back. It ate him slow for weeks and weeks and the only doctor they could pay couldn't stop it. Ezra's Ma was there when his cousin breathed his last, but the wife was tending their children.  
  
_I shoulda been there too,_ she told Ma, tears in her eyes.  
  
_Don't be stupid, girl,_ Ma said. And then she went on, and in a daze Ezra lets her words then fall from his mouth now:

“What I saw weren't closure. Jus' somethin' _worse_ than not knowin', what sticks behind your eyes an' waits in ambush when you blink.”  
  
Ulysses nods and follows his gaze down into the crater where a home once stood. “Know that. Not about closure.”

“Then _what?”_

He collects his thoughts on it a moment longer. Some things are easier felt than put into words. “Owe it better than to look away. Deserve to see what I've made, own it, carry it in me where the hate was. Hate I bore on every trail then wrote into the earth.

 

“Let it settle there long enough; time to read it back with fresh eyes.”

 

“Won’t find nothin' new,” Ezra warns.  “Same old shit. Differ’nt crater.”

 

“Nothing new in violence itself. Know that, too. Story’s older than language.” Ulysses looks at his hands folded over his knee like he expects to see two rivers of blood dripping through his fingers. “Always something new to take from it. Turn it around, look a different way. Different context. Made my choice then, seemed clear and simple. Rational. Context changed. Need to see it with new eyes, new perspective.”

“Context ain't changed.” Ezra spits over the ledge. Still tastes bile. “I killt two place an’ I didn' mean...” He hates how weak his voice gets.

He’d hesitated too long choosing between a hunk of metal he loved and some hundred or more men he didn't hate. He waited too long and he can’t take it back.

“I didn' mean t’do it. Funny how I killt two places an’ I didn't mean t’do it,” he whispers. “Most men go they whole lives not killin' one whole place by accident.”

 

“Killed two places with intent, in my time.”

 

“Ain’t we a pair. Be a kindness on everyone if  we jus’... sank into the river.”

 

Ulysses doesn't have anything to say to that, which is surprising. Ezra stares into the night that looks like a mural in front of him. Someone else’s bruised hands rest on someone else's holy jeans. It'll pass. It'll buff out. It'll all be too real, sooner or later, and he'll miss the stretch when it wasn't.

He wants to sleep but all the tired left him and the energy didn't come back in its place. He doesn't know what he is, now.

“When we goin’?” he asks.

Ulysses heaves a sigh and pushes to his feet like he feels all his years on him. Tonight he maybe does. He offers Ezra a hand up. “Don't have to come with me, Courier. Paid your due.”

Ezra stares past the hand, up at him. “Now?”

“No. Sleep for now.”

“Then when we goin’?”

Ulysses gives him a long, inscrutable look. Flexes his fingers once and Ezra complies, curls his own around them but doesn't pull to his feet.

“Tomorrow,” Ulysses relents.

Ezra nods and stands. He doesn't think he'll sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from a Dredg song.
> 
> Come yell at me to keep writing on [Tumblr](https://atomicreactor.tumblr.com)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eye level with his mouth. Tilts his head up and traces the scar on his lips with his own. Seals mouth to mouth in a neat fit they find too easily.
> 
> Equal and opposite forces that knit together like pieces of a puzzle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey remember when I said "eventual smut"???
> 
> Apparently I meant "smut in chapter 2."

  
  
Walker never complains about doubling back his own trail into the Divide before his bootprints have even faded. His joke, that the name is all he took after his father that suits him. Defined by constant forward momentum.  
  
Fog that overwhelmed him at Ulysses' vigil dissipates by morning. Or else he folds it away to some corner of his mind where he's cut a niche for it to linger long-term. He's grinning again, weary and drawn as he is. Finds some second wind to buoy him along the first day's walk, offers tall tales and little lies to try and block Ulysses' mind from getting ahead of them up the road. Some stories Ulysses has heard before, repeated not because he's forgotten, but to fill the spaces where the last year of his life might try and slip in. Newer stories. All end in bullets -- both had their fill. Soon to see more, too, and they know it.  
  
Tells him about a pup he named Ol' Shep. Fall from a cliff that nearly cost him a leg as a boy. Particular colors of the dawn over a cornfield, where he swears it looked like no other sky on earth. A prank on his eldest younger brother with a snake and a fresh bucket of Brahmin milk. The best parts of a book called _Huckleberry Finn_ , which Ulysses has not read.  
  
They sleep under the stars the first night, tucked together on a narrow cliffside ledge where nothing will reach them. Still too close to the Divide to not shiver through a cold wind shrieking down the canyon, but their position breaks the edges off the worst of it.  
  
Ezra stirs in the night, wide awake and trembling-restless, eyes unfocused and seeing somewhere else. Fog comes back around to carry him off; Ulysses feels it creeping into the edges of himself, too. Catches himself thinking of Dry Wells last he saw it; feels himself standing on the edge of that place where riptide drags him under until the water fills his lungs and he's too heavy to fight against it, where Here and Now turn to a distant shrinking shore and he can't see the stars of who he is to navigate back to it.  
  
They twine their limbs together. Tether each other down until it clears and leaves them be.  
  
Second day's the same and they're both tired twice over. Walker keeps talking, his husky voice low and easy but tinged with a kind of desperation. Like if he stops they'll think too much and lose each other. Ulysses' mood suffers from the lack of sleep and once or twice he wants to tell the man to close his mouth a while. Doesn’t, in the end.  
  
Walker tells him about a man named Randall Dean Clark. About a woman called Waking Cloud. A beast called the Ghost of She.  
  
Tells him about the way the red of the cliffs at Zion changed hue from dawn to dusk. Ulysses tells him he's seen that too -- at a place in Arizona called Havasu.  
  
That night they find a cave Walker's stopped in before. Bed roll there waiting, tucked among the rocks. Coyotes, too. Put their hackles up at Ulysses but Walker calms them.  
  
Wakes before dawn to find Walker missing and a coyote warming the space he left. Makes them docile, and the smell of him keeps them when he's gone. Different from the hounds at Denver, ones Caesar broke down into tame men again when he threw their brethren on the fires. Once watched their mutts like scrying sign meant only for them until they were two-legged shadows of the dogs.  
  
Doesn’t know what Ezra does to make the wild things off the roads turn gentle. Maybe just can't tell the difference between him and the warm sand and wind; a man who's as wild and easy as their home.  
  
Ulysses lays there alone a while, thinking of the places he’s called home. Holes in each of them now, all three. Some of that's his own doing.  
  
They eat a hearty breakfast of what Walker tells him is 'desert chicken.' Makes him nervous. Asks which bird Walker thinks is a chicken.  
  
"Whichever one I find that ain't prone to pickin' at a dead Brahmin's asshole. I ain't no _or-nuh-thawl-o-gist_ ."  
  
Third day starts quiet. Thoughts wind out down the roads ahead. Hawk crying out in the distance breaks the rhythm of footfalls and spurs, brings him back to his body, and it's then he realizes Walker's run out of whatever reserves kept his mouth going.  
  
"Ever tell you about my first scouting in Monument Valley?" he asks, and sees confusion in Walker's eye, then affection supplants it.  
  
They walk a little farther through the dark than the nights before, aiming to make Primm before they stop. Another day's walk East on 164 after that. Plan to boat down the Colorado from Cottonwood Cove as Walker did before in his mission to face another Divide. Snuck past "them no-good, slave-tradin', Caesar's-cock-suckin' redshirt sonsabitches -- _no offense_."

Stole a raft by his lonesome the last time. Ulysses can still walk right in.  
  
NCR camp on the nearer end of the overpass. Ulysses thought they'd move on when he heard the convicts were cleared, town secured. Not surprised they didn't. Never there for Primm's benefit to begin with, just their own strategic front. No matter to them if the hostiles are gone or not, if the town wants its space back. Walker glances toward the tents with some interest as they pass, itching for news in case things changed in his week on the road. Doesn’t stop, because Ulysses doesn't stop. Pair of them pass by the entry point, but the trooper on EC duty only gets one friendly nod between them.  
  
Past there it's quiet, all the townsfolk gone to sleep. Ulysses is free to take in the changes without working not to catch Johnson Nash's eye.  
  
Town's been to hell and back since last he came here for --  
  
Tries not to think about that.  
  
Walker tells him the hotel is still a shambles after the convicts tore through it, and him after them. Slept worse places with more bullet holes, both of them, but take a better option if they have it and they do. Safehouse Walker found for himself. Has a few, strung like beads along the major highways. Ulysses has seen one or two, even used them out of necessity when he thought the Courier was dead and gone.  
  
Walker leads him to it. They pass a brick building they both know, Mojave Express bright red over their heads, dark red-brown smear down the wall out front. Starts at eye level for an average-height man.  
  
Which Ezra is not.  
  
He reminds himself Walker is too tall, can just see over Ulysses' hair with them both standing straight.  
  
It's not his. Wrong height. Wrong place. They round the corner and it's out of sight, and Ulysses tries not to think about it.

  
  
Tries.

  
Fails.

  
  
Three big craters in his life. One in his lover's brow. His own doing, without the courage to put it there himself.  
  
But when they met at the Temple and numbered down their crimes on each other Walker left it out of the counting; his vengeance for it ran its course already at the Strip. Attached it all to the smile of the man who made him kneel and wait, choking on fear, for what he knew was coming -- that did worse to him than the bullets. That stuck deeper in his skull than the scars.  
  
That hole in their lives is struck off Ulysses' record in good faith. He can't forget it, but he can't dwell on it. Whole trip's for him to look his guilt in the eye and Walker's there to carry him through it. Needs to be able to look his lover in the eye, too, without mixing him up with his list of regrets.  
  
Lower themselves one-by-one by ladder into a closed-off stretch of old maintenance walkway, no more than fifteen steps long and eight steps wide. Place is neat from being well sealed and not well lived in: some crates, a chair, a folding table. A mattress, a sink, a set of lockers.  
  
Ulysses resurfaces to prepare MREs in the open air with respect to the fumes the flameless ration heaters generate. Sits out there awhile, trap door open beside him to cycle the stale air out. Listens to the radio drone on below him and the sink gutter to life and keep running. Tries not to think of things he's broken, or tried to break, but that's impossible. His first home is on the horizon, one more night and a day before he faces it. Stares down all the ghosts that came back haunting Walker, who never saw what Dry Wells was before. Never knew it for a place or a people.  
  
His stomach twists with dread. One last chance to sleep before he faces what he did in misplaced anger. Doesn’t think he will. Too tired for sleep. Too weak for rest.

  
  
When he climbs back down he finds Walker scrubbed clean and naked.

  
  
Water relaxes his sunbleached curls into waves, darkens them like honey. He wrings excess water out of jeans that had had a week or more of road dust in them, hangs them up to dry with his shirts on a length of wire strung up beside a vent. Glances Ulysses' direction on his way to a locker for spare clothes.  
  
"Usually charge fer a show," Ezra tells him, and Ulysses realizes he had been watching, unmoving. "Don't come highly recommended, though, bit of a niche market."  
  
Ulysses hums and takes a seat in the lone chair. "Which one?" he asks, certain he's being baited into a--  
  
"Necrophilia."

 

\--mmhm.

  
He gives Ezra a look, and the man grins shamelessly back. "That were funny an' you know it."

“No.”

  
He deflates, closes the locker door. "Fine, then." Pulls on a pair of jeans that hang off his waist. Just jeans. Combs his wet hair back with his fingers and sits on the edge of the table to eat his share.  
  
Ulysses leans his shoulder into Walker's ribs by way of reassurance. Doesn’t say anything.  
  
Was a time making him _suffer_ ... tearing him apart, skin and bone and soul, making him bleed out all he had in rivers and torrents to feed the desert and then _putting him down beneath it for good..._  
  
Was a time that anger, that thought, that vicious hunger was all that kept him going. Satisfying that itch for closure. Cause and effect. Meaning and symbols in the symmetry between them, two dead men who kill nations -- reflecting back in the Courier all that had been done to him. Bringing together two equal and opposite forces and sinking them both into the earth.  
  
Met in the middle and halted each other, came out changed and alive. Not what he wanted. Better than that. Cleaner.  
  
But here they are with the collateral awaiting them on the other side of another turn of the earth.  
  
Feels scoured and hollowed out sometimes, now that the hate's gone. Feels how much it ate of him in its absence. Something new has started filling in the cracks, something unexpected. Simple. Warm. Something he'd thought he'd killed already.

The hate thrived on arranging Walker's death in a way that would satisfy the bloodthirst of history; the new tenant in his chest recoils from the thought of it. Dreads it. Fragile little thing he thinks will die for good when Ezra is gone, and he doesn't know what would keep him going then except force of habit. Doesn’t know what he'd have done if Ezra had died down in Goodsprings, where he'd be. Nowhere as healthful as this moment and the ones they stole before it.  
  
Those are all the reasons and that's the story between them. For all the words he has, he can't frame the right ones around it to say it like it feels.

  
  
So he doesn't.

  
  
When the meal's done Walker cleans his mouth with a proper toothbrush, and toothpaste that looks homemade but serviceable. When Ulysses is offered the use of both he finds it tastes like nothing at all. Walker makes a point of keeping his body clean as much as he can but avoids adding any scent to himself that'll carry on the wind.

While he's at the sink anyway Ulysses takes his turn to clean himself, since the opportunity is there. Walker takes up the table for gun maintenance in his absence. Familiar .45 auto and an unfamiliar carbine lie pulled apart down to firing pins.

Ulysses watches from the corner of his eye while he pulls off his mask and then his duster. Takes interest in practiced but imprecise movements of long, slender fingers to clear away grit. Sluggish and shaking from exhaustion, or nerve damage… the ever-present bruises and abrasions on the knuckles. The memory of how many times each digit’s been broken. But they know their work like they know themselves.

Catches Walker watching him back as he pulls his shirts off. Pretends he doesn't. Takes his time with the boots. Jeans and underclothes.  Sets his ornaments neatly in the space of the locker.

Feels good to clean his hair under the tap and he takes his time to see to it properly, wash away the grit and dry it out well. Washcloth has to be enough for the rest of him -- a long and drawn out process of wetting his skin down, lathering soap onto himself in swathes, cleaning it away with a damp cloth. Neck to shoulders to chest and down. Takes more time than he needs, allowing himself to take in the fleeting pleasure of the cold water on him and of Ezra’s hands gone still over his work long ago.

Takes more time still to wash and wring out his clothes, hip leaned against the basin of the sink, stretches long to hang them up with the others.

Been counting the time since he tolerated eyes and hands on his body in years. Longer since he craved it.

Now when he's clean and turns to find Ezra crept up in his space, he can only think of the few weeks it's been since he felt bare skin on his. How that, itself, has become a very long time to go without.

 

“Long day tomorrow,” Ezra tells him, gravelly and grave.

 

“More walking,” Ulysses concedes.

 

“Legionnaires,” agrees Ezra.

 

“Boating.”

 

“Wet boots. _Seasickness_.”

 

“You get seasick?” he asks. “On a _river_?” Ezra shrugs.

 

“Naw, but I figger _you_ seem the type.” End of the journey after that point is on both of their minds, and neither needs to broach it, he thinks. They know. They'll go together. That's all that needs to be said, and it doesn't need to be said at all. “Gonna need to rest up good an' proper, case there's any heated arguments once we in Legion territory.”

 

“Mm. Haven't slept easily, last few nights.”

 

“Might could help you wi’ that.” Glint in Ezra’s eye, but his arms hang by his sides. Won't put hands on him without knowing that it's welcome, without being _told_. “Can I touch you?”

 

Ulysses hums. “Wish you would.”

 

Doesn't hesitate once it's permitted. Rough hands skim up his sides, skitter over old scars. Thumb counts them on his ribs, ticks them off one by one and soothes them over with twitchy fingertips like birds startling against his skin. Come up and comb curiously through the hair on his chest, trace the length of his collarbone and admire the breadth of his shoulders.

Ulysses hooks his fingers easily in the baggy excess of Ezra’s waistband and pulls him closer. Rubs a scar with his thumb, where it cuts a pink line through a rose tattooed on his hip.

Eye level with his mouth. Tilts his head up and traces the scar on his lips with his own. Seals mouth to mouth in a neat fit they find too easily.

 

Equal and opposite forces that knit together like pieces of a puzzle.

 

Ezra curls his hands around Ulysses’ biceps and tugs him. Lets himself be pulled along, lets himself guided back to the lone chair and pushed into it. “My gift to you,” Ezra growls as he kneels down in front of him. Cracks a grin. “ ‘Bout fifteen minutes of bein’ _taller’n_ me.”

 

Ulysses shoves him.

 

He’s laughing, despite himself. Feels like it's been startled out of him. “Only giving me fifteen minutes’ credit?” Ulysses leans back, arches an eyebrow down at him. “Can last longer than that.”

“Givin’ _m’self_ fifteen minutes’ credit,” Ezra counters. “Can make you come in that or less. Mostly wi' the power of guilt,” he adds, dropping the bravado and affecting a look of wide-eyed sincerity. “Have _you_ ever tried suckin' dick longer’n that? My jaw ain’t iron, fella.”

Another huff of a laugh escapes him, feels most of it in the shake of his shoulders. Ezra grins at him like that's all he's wanted for years.

 

“Come here,” Ulysses tells him. “Not done kissing you.”

 

He complies, climbs up into his lap and traps him down between his thighs. Denim of his jeans is soft from wear but still denim, and Ulysses is bare beneath him. Winces in discomfort when the inseam presses down on him. Ezra takes the hint with a soft _aw, shit_ and lifts his weight, shifts further back on Ulysses’ thighs. “That… wow, that is _my mistake_ , pardner--”

Shuts him up again by dragging him in, mouth to mouth. Ezra smirks and counters by making a nonsensical stream of noises around his tongue like he's still talking; Ulysses wheezes a laugh out through his nose. Tries not to. Loses the battle.

Reward for admitting defeat is hands on him again, dragging blunt nails down the the nape of his neck and out across his shoulder blades, up again to trace the lines of his pulse up to his ears. Tongue tracing the tip of his and making him chase it back into Ezra’s mouth again to get a better taste.

Ezra’s teeth scrape over his lower lip and tug, trail edges along a meandering line over his jaw and down to his throat. Take the place of wandering fingers that have taken an interest in all the textures of his chest.

Ulysses trails his hands up the bumps of Ezra's spine. Makes a roadmap of his scars by touch. Counts each vertebra in time with the mouth sucking marks into his neck.

Long fingers tug at his chest hair. Make note of the coarseness of this stretch of flesh and chase it with the contrast of his nipples between fingers. Ulysses grunts and grips him by the shoulders.

Touch only feels skin deep, but sends a spray of goosebumps sparking up along flesh far off from the point of contact, like a shockwave. Feels it like electricity up his chest and neck, down his arms.

 

Effect ripples down to his groin, but Ezra’s backed off too far to get friction when he jerks his hips up.

 

Wearing the jeans on purpose. Trying to drive him insane.

 

He slides his hands down under the waistband and palms Ezra’s backside, tries to throw comfort and caution to the wind and drag him in close again. Ezra plants his feet against the back legs of the chair and pushes to stop his progress. Keeps toying with his chest.

“Somethin’ the matter, fella?” he asks. Drags kisses and bites down the curve of Ulysses’ shoulder.

 

“Mmno,” he grits out. “No, just fine.”

 

Feels the grin curl out against his skin. “Only I get the feelin' you want somethin’.”

 

“Mm-mm. No.” Can play along, drag it out. Mouth twitches at the corners. Can’t recall what made him smile as often before this man stumbled in.

Ezra leans back, leans sideways, starts to work on making Ulysses match on the other side. Symmetrical. Nips and kisses up and down his throat, finds new territory to devastate along his clavicle.

Ulysses tries to relax into it but his spine tenses again and again when a nerve, a patch of overwhelmed skin, sends more feedback than it's worth zipping back through the rest of him. Muscles twitch almost in a rhythm, tightening in a breath then relaxing in increments just to do it again when Ezra finds another spot that reacts to him.

It all trips pressure down into the base of his spine, coiling in his gut. Won't wind up the way he needs it to like this. Miles off from his breaking point and heading there at a casual stroll.

Hard and aching when Ezra comes up to give him the run of that mouth again, has his hand on Ezra's bony hips and holds them like a lifeline. Breath comes in puffs against his stubbled cheek. Those hands settle up on his shoulders, nowhere near anywhere he wants them. Flexes his arms experimentally to reel him in again but the man still refuses to budge.

“I accept constructive criticism,” Ezra informs him, then licks along his lips. Trails his hands down lower, draws nonsense shapes over Ulysses’ belly. Drags touches like creeping vines over his sides. Every one sends a little shock through Ulysses’ skin, too intent on where he's going with them, tensing second by second with anticipation that the next second’s the one where he'll take him in hand.

Turns parts of him that wouldn't be sensitive otherwise into electric feedback. Every nerve keyed up to be the one that sounds the alarm when the torture is over.

“Wondering if I'm still getting that gift,” he huffs against Ezra’s jaw. Trails his own wandering hands forward to feel along Ezra's fly, where it peaks up higher than before. Presses down carefully with the heel of his thumb and finds resistance, gets a sharp breath for confirmation. Takes relief in that. Doesn’t always work out this well.

“Which? Don't remember. Already letcha use my toothbrush-- _mm._ ” Cuts off when Ulysses grips him a little fiercer, pressing the sudden advantage.

 

“One where I get to be taller than you.”

 

Ezra leans back and grins at him. “Only fer fifteen minutes, though.”

 

“We'll see.” He leans in and kisses him soundly one more time, kneads the crotch of Ezra's jeans -- occurs to him it can't be that comfortable, idiot didn't put on underwear, but Ezra only groans long and helpless. Pushes his hand away and slides back off his lap.

“After all you put me through,” Ulysses grumbles, faking irritation. Spreads his knees to let Ezra fit in close between them. “Might not feel too guilty making you work overtime.”

Ezra trails his hands up Ulysses' thighs and feels along the join of his hips. Smirks up at him. “Do whatcha love and you'll never work a damn day in yer life.”

Ulysses barks out a laugh that turns to a groan when Ezra doesn’t waste time handling him dry -- just leans down and licks a long stripe up the underside of his shaft, swirls his tongue around the tip and swallows him down.

 

Catches him off guard. Ulysses drags in a breath and holds it in his lungs. Lets his head fall back on his shoulders.

 

Ezra has practice. Grips him around the base with one hand and fondles his balls deftly with the other. Takes him in to a point that's easy, some limit he knows where he doesn't have to strain. Can pull back up from there, return, again and again at a steady rhythm that crashes in unrelenting waves up Ulysses’ spine.

Grips the edge of the table beside him with one hand, bites down on the other to steady himself. Ulysses remembers to breathe all at once -- releases the lungful of air and pants the next few.

 

Tries to hold still and let it wash over him.

 

Fails.

 

Hips roll up into it without his permission, meets Ezra halfway and pushes that little bit deeper into his mouth. Gets rewarded with a groan of approval that rattles him down to every nerve _._

Stops biting his knuckles and reaches down to tangle his fingers in Ezra’s hair instead. Finds, with a grateful moan, that he'll let him guide the pace like that. That he'll let him choose the depth.

 

Ezra lets him take the reins back over his own pleasure and he tries to be considerate. Difficult. He can't--

 

He's lost the higher reasoning to consider anything else at all.

 

When was the last time he--?

 

Don't think.

 

Everything else down the road -- behind them and ahead -- everything dissolves. Can’t think of anything else.

 

Whole world filters down to the mouth mercifully devouring him -- obscene sounds it makes in the doing, _God_. Doesn’t even notice one hand leaving him.

 

Ezra slows on his way back up and makes him _swear_ at the cruelty of it. Feels a smile straining to form around him and somehow that almost undoes him.

 

Somehow that makes him jerk-- breath comes out it's nearly a sob.

 

Not there yet. Ezra's not done with him yet. Hollows his cheeks like he means to pull the life from him, then eases back down.

Lets him in past that boundary he set for himself, pushes down until Ulysses feels his throat working against him. Another breath he didn't realize he was holding crashes out of him and he doubles over.

That slow pace keeps and holds a while. Holds him prisoner and Ulysses watches.

Watches himself disappear into his lover's mouth with his lungs frozen in awe. Watches Ezra work himself off with his left hand, jeans pushed down his hips, getting off on giving him pleasure.

Meets Ulysses’ eyes with that glint in his. Doesn’t occur to him for one second to be ashamed of the ruin the bullet made one of them.

 

Ezra picks up the tempo again but he doesn't need to. Was all it took.

 

Ulysses groans long and loud when the tension snaps and spills over, jerks up into him for one last go -- breath knocks right out of him again when Ezra drinks him down.

He melts bonelessly down into the chair, shuddering when Ezra sucks him a moment longer before letting him go. Runs his hand down the back of Ezra's neck when his rough cheek rests against his thigh.

Ezra finishes himself off quickly, bites down on the skin of Ulysses’ hip with a grunt and then relaxes heavily against him.

Takes a while to find the wherewithal to move. Like to hold each other, yes -- but neither blames the other for not making the effort for a bit.

It's Ezra who manages first, leans up to trail kisses along the join of his thigh then uses Ulysses’ knees as handholds to pull himself to standing. The kisses linger on his skin. Thinks for a moment that he's too old for gestures like that, or to like them as he does.

Jeans are peeled off the rest of the way and kicked carelessly into the corner. Ezra looks at him, swaying on his feet. All that missed sleep found its way back in with the tension worked out of his muscles.

 

“C’mon fella. Long day tomorrah, as you will recall.”

 

Ulysses holds out a hand and Ezra snorts and takes it, pulls him up. Follows the momentum into a kiss. Doesn’t care for the idea of tasting himself; doesn't care about that when the reality is his lips on Ezra.

  
“Long day,” he agrees, letting himself be tugged to the mattress and dragged down onto it. “Might just manage.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come shame me on [Tumblr!](https://atomicreactor.tumblr.com)


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